mad as hell

  Rant warning... This is a rant!

This morning I woke up to this news headline: Families angry at £300m MoD bonuses

• Families whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice for their country have reacted angrily to news that civil servants at the Ministry of Defence have shared performance bonuses of almost £300 million since the start of the war in Iraq.

Yesterday they were asking us to Remember, today they would like us to Forget; forget we ever heard of the £300 million paid out to the desk jockeys and pencil pushing cunts of the MOD. This absolutely disgusting amount of money was paid out in bonuses to office staff whilst our soldiers on the ground were being killed due to a lack of proper equipment…equipment the MOD allegedly didn’t have money for. I wonder how many helicopters $300million will buy?

Here is a link to one of the news articles.

Here is a more colourful version of the story from the MAIL on-line.

You're being led by the nose by the "independent media" again.

There may well be too many office wallahs in the MoD and that probably costs too much, yes.

Setting that aside, people who work for the MoD have "pay and conditions," same as anyone else. Part of these is a bonus scheme. A common level of bonus is £1000 (so I'm told). That's not a hell of a lot over a year.

What you ranting goons don't realise is that for "rank and file" civil servants, bonus pay is a way of reducing pay, without the firm blatantly cutting basic rates. In theory, bonus is based on targets met and great work done, but actually, in a year when money is short and employees have nowhere else to go, it's pretty easy for the "firm" to cut bonuses, claiming that the staff haven't worked well enough.

Equating money people are paid with life-saving (or enemy life-ending) equipment not bought, is an easy headline-grabber, but if you employ people you do have to pay them something.

Read "Lions, donkeys & dinosaurs" if you really wanna get worked up on how the military's run. It's not bonuses to MoD staff that's the crime, it's the fact we give BaE all the contracts regardless of cost and quailty of product. 

Doesn't help that each arm of the service has their own budget. There's easily enough for 'copters, for example, except the RAF don't liek being taxi drivers for the army and would rather spend it on shiny planes they never use etc etc

ink ink wrote (see)

You're being led by the nose by the "independent media" again.

ink ink wrote (see)

There may well be too many office wallahs in the MoD and that probably costs too much, yes.

Say something constructive Chris. 

 Do you think MoD staff should get less pay?  Why?

 There's no doubt they should be efficient and use money well and you seem to be trying to say they're not, which is a fair point, but ranting about the bonuses to tanks ratio is just silly.

ink ink wrote (see)

What you ranting goons don't realise is that for "rank and file" civil servants, bonus pay is a way of reducing pay, without the firm blatantly cutting basic rates. In theory, bonus is based on targets met and great work done, but actually, in a year when money is short and employees have nowhere else to go, it's pretty easy for the "firm" to cut bonuses, claiming that the staff haven't worked well enough.

wavydave13 wrote (see)

you two will have to meet outside the tube station.

Mean while at brixton tube station..........

Nice big bonus for all that pencil pushing

Save up and buy a helicopter...

If the Earth is the size of a pea in Britain, then the Sun is a beachball 50m away, Pluto is 4km away, and the next nearest star is in Tokyo. Now shrink Pluto's orbit into a coffee cup, then our Milky Way Galaxy fills North America

DonnyBrago wrote (see)

Nice big bonus for all that pencil pushing

Save up and buy a helicopter...

I just love that moronic asinine comment, " You're being led by the nose by the "independent media"  if it werent for the independent media we would know shit about what's going on behind our backs.

Last week we were robbed once again by RBS, formerly know as Royal Bank of Scotland, but now going by the much more popular name, Rotten Bag of Shit.  £39.2 billion was the amount they got away with this time. That's right we've just bailed these failed gamblers out again. Not a mention of this on  the BBC news pages. Nothing at all to even suggest it.  And  no analysis either, as  finance correspondent Robert Peston is "away",

 The Evening Standard and the Mail had banner headlines about it but with  BBC it shows up the next day burried in the back of the business section under the small print heading, "Darling hails Lloyds and RBS move". 

 Wool pullers?  

Chris P. Bacon wrote (see)

More rubbish.

You're being "led by the nose" because you've posted a rant about a story in the media, which is founded on people (mainly) getting £1000 in a year.  In a huge beaurocracy like the MoD, there are bound to be huge savings to be made, quite possibly involving layoffs, but you're barking up the wrong tree with this bonus nonsense.

 Have you ever had a job?  How much of your pay did you hand back so they could do something more worthy with the money?

 I called everyone here a ranting goon because it sounds nice and I'm evil.  Also it's true.

ink ink wrote (see)

Chris P. Bacon wrote (see)

More rubbish.

You're being "led by the nose" because you've posted a rant about a story in the media, which is founded on people (mainly) getting £1000 in a year.  In a huge beaurocracy like the MoD, there are bound to be huge savings to be made, quite possibly involving layoffs, but you're barking up the wrong tree with this bonus nonsense.

 Have you ever had a job?  How much of your pay did you hand back so they could do something more worthy with the money?

 I called everyone here a ranting goon because it sounds nice and I'm evil.  Also it's true.

ink ink, the key difference is if you work in the private sector your salary is market driven. the public sector salaries are not linked to anything except how much budget each department gets.

public sector often forgets that it is being paid with private sector taxes and nothing else. so bonus schemes are a bit laughable. the savings are only their because of the huge waste there was to start with. 

but dont worry the tax take has plummeted recently so dont count on any "bonus" in the future.

There are more differences than that.  In good times there's more money to be had in the private sector.  And sometimes much bigger bonuses.  I would never seek to deny the CS is overweight, inefficient and empire-building.

Assuming that I work for the Civil Service because I know slightly more than zero about it, is something of a classic mistake on your part.